


hope turns into certainty

by stjarna



Series: Season 5 spec fics / coda / missing scenes [18]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feels, MCD implied, Mention of pregnancy, Reunion, a mixed bag of feels, canon-compliant MCD, happy end, hopeful end, like my current mental state, lots of feels, love defying the odds, major spoilers for 5x22, post 5x22, s6 spec, various shades of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 19:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stjarna/pseuds/stjarna
Summary: A Fitzsimmons post-5x22 / S6 spec ficMAJOR SPOILERS FOR 5x22





	hope turns into certainty

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @dilkirani for the beta.  
> Banner by me.
> 
> Somewhat based on this prompt in a comment on ["He gave you everything"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709842): "Would you consider writing some therap... I mean something about them finding him and the conversations and possibly revealing something that may or may not happen in oh say 7 or 9 months from now?"

They find him three weeks after taking off from a beach in Tahiti.

They find him two days after she knows for sure. Two days after an inkling, a nervous suspicion she'd tried to push to the back of her mind becomes reality.

For 48 hours she tries to deny it. For 48 hours she's torn between the happiness of carrying his child, carrying a part of him, flesh and blood in the making, and the devastation of not knowing, not knowing if they'll find him or if she'll have to go through it alone.

_Quite a strange feeling, isn't it? Never wanting to be without someone._

When they find the ship, when they find him, when she stands in front of the capsule and sees his face behind frozen glass, pale and cold and lifeless, his eyes closed, panic overcomes her.

The thought that she hadn’t imagined it. That moment standing in front of his casket, looking at his face, pale and cold and lifeless, his eyes closed.

That moment when she thought time stood still and she'd be trapped right there forever, with him so close and yet so far, with her alive and him dead, her heart burning and his cold.

Her hands start shaking and she has to lean onto the capsule to keep from collapsing. Everything around her disappears. Her friends. Her team. Enoch. All there is, once again, just her standing, burning from within, and him, lying there, cold as ice.

She holds her breath like she had held it then. Looking at his face.

She'd held it then, wishing she'd stop breathing like him. Now she holds her breath, begging for him to breathe life back into her.

And when the ice on the window melts and he gasps and his eyes open, she feels like her lungs fill with air, and her heart starts beating again.

He looks confused, staring at her face through the glass pane. When the capsule opens, he struggles to sit up, his hands trembling. He's disoriented. He stares at them. Her name is the first word that escapes his lips, his voice raw and trembling.

“Has it been 74 years?” he asks in confusion, his eyes wandering from person to person.

She throws her arms around him and cries. She sobs and clings to him as if she could absorb him, make him an actual part of her.

He hugs her tightly, whispering her name, asking what happened, but all she can do is cry.

She cries over having lost him. Cries over having found him. Cries for every good moment he missed. Cries for every moment of hardship he won’t have to endure. Cries because she gets a second chance. Cries because part of him never will.

She can feel other arms embracing her. Embracing them. Because maybe they needed him back just as desperately as she did.

She inhales his scent and it's the same and it’s different and she cries. Her fingers roam through his hair, down his shoulders, his back, and she cries because she wants to feel every inch of him, every cell, and yet it burns to touch him. The fear of it all slipping away.

She wants to scream and she wants to cling to him harder, because he's here and he's back and yet he's there and he's gone.

She's not sure how long they stand there. She's not sure when the others leave. She's not sure when her tears stop falling. She just knows that at one point she hears his voice whisper her name again, less shaky now, but concern lacing each letter.

She finally dares look at him, and when she notices the life back in his blue irises it’s the first time in weeks that she feels her lips quirk into a smile.

Once again he asks her what happened, barely above a whisper, careful, as if he knows that the answer could break her. His arms still drape around her waist, to catch her when she falls.

She laughs sadly, because even though she'd thought about what to say, how to explain it, now that the moment is here all the words she'd practiced are lost.

“We disproved a theory,” she finally says.

He furrows his brow, waiting for an explanation.

“Time isn't fixed, Fitz,” she tells him, almost proudly, her heart swelling with joy as she speaks his name, knowing she’s not saying it into a void that won’t reply to her. “We changed it. We saved the world.”

“But I—” he tries to interject and she knows exactly what’s on his mind.

“You travelled to the future,” she explains, her fingers almost absentmindedly tracing the features of his face, noticing what’s always been there and what’s gone missing. “In a different timeline. A different loop. You took the long way. Seventy-four years. And you found us and you helped us get back to our present day and we saved the world.”

A weak smile flashes across his face as he listens to her words.

“And now we came here,” she continues, mirroring the ghost of his happy expression, “in a spaceship you designed and built to bring you— _this_ you—back to an Earth that’s whole and green and safe.”

“So there's two of me now?” He chuckles, a single quiet laugh. “Bloody hell. Haven’t you been through enough?”

She grimaces, tears clouding her vision and his expression changes from one split second to the next, the teasing sparkle in his eyes, the humor he’s always used to deflect a difficult situation disintegrating, morphing into something more somber, pained. Because he knows. Because of course he would.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispers.

“Don't be.” She shakes her head, forcing a smile. “Because we've defied time and space and dimensions and now we've defied death itself and there's nothing—”

She can't finish the sentence. She can't bring herself to ever be that confident again. Because, yes, they defied death but there are no second chances from here on out.

He pushes her hair behind her ear, his hand gently coming to rest pressed against her cheek. “I'm never leaving your side again.”

A sound escapes her throat, between a laugh and a sob. “We've made that promise to ourselves before.” She swallows hard, trying to break through the tightness in her throat. “So I think we really need to work on our follow-through this time around.”

Her chin begins to quiver and she leans into his touch, to feel him closer, to feel him there.

“I promise—” he begins.

“We got married.” She's not sure what makes her blurt it out like that, maybe it's because she wants nothing more than to call him her husband again.

He stares at her, his lips parted in shock. Then his gaze wanders to her hand and he slides his palm underneath hers, bringing her hand up, his thumb carefully caressing her wedding band.

He looks at her, searching her eyes as if she’d just told him a secret he’d never thought existed.

“You said yes,” he whispers and she can't help but chuckle.

“I was the one who asked, actually.”

He furrows his brow, his thumb again gliding over her ring. “But I had it all planned. A whole speech and—”

“Well, you did ask, too, but… but I couldn't hear you.”

The wrinkles on his forehead grow deeper as he tries to piece together a story he won’t ever fully comprehend. “That's—”

“Does it matter?” she asks, shrugging slightly.

“No,” he replies, his answer quick and confident.

A smile flashes across her face. “Will you marry me again?”

“Of course,” he whispers without hesitation.

She allows herself to get lost in his words, in his eyes, in his touch and yet, the longer she stares into the deep blue ocean that is his irises, the more she drowns in everything that’s still left unsaid.

He looks at her, knowingly, his fingers tracing her hairline. “What else is there?”

She pauses, wetting her lips, her gaze instinctively wandering to her stomach before finding his eyes again. “I'm pregnant.”

She can see the synapses in his brain firing, wondering, trying to comprehend.

“With his baby,” he realizes.

“With _your_ baby,” she corrects him.

For a moment, all is silent, all but the thumping in her chest, as she studies his face, his eyes, his expression.

Then his lips twitch, barely noticably at first, until a mischievous spark brightens his eyes that she thought she’d lost.

“So I get all the benefits without doing any of the work,” he jokes.

She laughs, dropping her head back, hearing the sound of her own laughter that she thought had been silenced forever.

“So sleeping with me is work?” she teases him back. “I find that hard to believe.”

He joins her laughter, before sealing her lips with his. She can taste him, feel the familiar softness of his kiss.

And then she cries again.

Because she told him the truth and it's his baby she’s carrying. And yet, she’s lying because it isn't and she can't wrap her head around it.

He allows her to cry, pecking gentle kisses to her lips, to the corners of her mouth, to her nose, her cheeks, her eyes. And with each kiss her tears ebb further away.

She rests her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, strong and steady and _there_. And little by little the frantic beating in her own chest slows down as well.

She looks up, searching his eyes, noticing love and fear and guilt shimmering back at her.

She cups his face, her fingers gently digging into his skin. “Promise me that if you hear him, if you see him, you'll tell me. You'll tell someone. You'll get help. You won't go through it alone.”

“Hear who—?” he asks, his forehead wrinkled, until realization hits him and his eyes open.

“What did I do?” he mutters, panic lacing his tone.

She smiles at him, caressing the soft skin below his eyes with her thumbs to reassure him. “I promise you, Fitz, I will tell you everything. The happy things that happened, and the sad, and the hopeful, and the tragic. Everything. Truthfully.”

She pauses, reaching for her back pocket and pulling out his wedding band. “But right now, I need my husband back. Right now I need him to hold me and kiss me and be with me.”

He looks at the golden ring in her palm before his gaze wanders up to her eyes. His are swimming in tears and his fingers tremble as he picks up the ring, twisting and turning it as if he can't believe it's real.

“I promise you,” she tells him, her voice shaking with tears, “I promise you we’ll have a real wedding back home. One that we both remember. And I’ll be so lucky to be allowed to marry you again, but right now… please, be my husband again, Fitz. Because that’s who you were always meant to be. In every world, every timeline. Always.”

He holds her gaze, before extending the ring in her direction. She takes it, grabbing his hand with her free one. Her lips quiver, torn between crying and laughing as she slides the golden band onto his finger.

He looks at her in silence for a moment before leaning closer, kissing her softly, as if he worries he doesn’t have the same permission to kiss her as his other self.

She pulls him closer, her fingers desperate to feel him; her lips, her tongue demanding more.

He tenses at first and part of her wants to agree that she shouldn't rush, she shouldn't let desperation dictate her actions.

But she can't hold back, she won't hold back.

Because time is precious and time is fleeting and she can't bear the thought of waiting even just a second and giving the universe a chance to tear them apart again.

He picks her up, his lips never leaving hers, and carries her to the bed at the side of the room.

She doesn't allow her eyes to close as they make love to each other. She needs to see him and feel him and taste him and smell him. And he looks at her, his irises dark and blown wide with desire, with longing and lust and love and a promise written in his every feature.

She cries as their bodies become one, as she feels his skin against hers, feels closer than she'd ever thought possible. She cries because he's here and she cries because he's gone. She cries because he’s the father of her child and she cries because he’s not.

And when their movements slow down, when their heartbeats become calmer and their breathing steadies and he kisses her softly whispering “I'm here” over and over and over again, she cries.

She cries until she believes his words, until the man she lost and the man she found merge in front of her eyes, until the lost piece of her heart settles back into place, until her home becomes whole again and hope turns into certainty.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 200th fic. I kinda thought it would be something very fluffy and happy and funny. But maybe it's fitting that it falls more in the "angst with happy end" category. [It also seems fitting and a tad ironic that my very first fic was a S3 Fallen Agent fic with Fitz as the fallen agent, and I called it ["Space"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6763201) and my 200th fic now deals with Fitz's actual death in canon and Jemma finding him in space..... Oh, look, I made myself cry again.]
> 
> I honestly wasn't sure about including a pregnancy in this fic (but decided to do it since the prompt mentioned it). I'm still torn about what I want canon to do. On the one hand, the thought breaks my heart (and the fact that Jemma drank the whiskey in the finale makes me think they're not going there... then again, she may just not know yet)... on the other hand, the thought that she's pregnant and a part of the Fitz we lost will live on, and the Fitz we still have will get to raise a baby that's his and yet also isn't, is simultaneously beautiful and sad... so... I don't know. What I don't want is have Jemma go through pregnancy and birth alone.
> 
> I'll stop the rambling now.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
